Untreated mental health problems cost us all

He and his wife are loving and generous. They have opened their home to those in need, adopting several children.

Watching them is both inspiring and humbling.

Yet it has also kept me up at night — because I know they have seen things no parents ever should.

That includes the time their son attacked his mother with a butcher knife … only to weep in apology afterward for bipolar behavior that the boy could neither understand nor control.

That would be traumatic enough. But imagine if you were scared of — and for — your own son and were unable to find him the help he needed when he needed it most.

Too often, that has been this Orlando family's problem. And too often, similar problems hit families throughout Central Florida.

Mental health is one of our most under-discussed and under-served problems, especially when it comes to kids.

That's why I applaud Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs' creation of the Youth Mental Health Commission, which held its first meeting Monday.

Jacobs set up the commission for several reasons. She had seen incidents of violence among troubled youth. She heard the pleas of families who didn't know where else to turn.

And she was sick of spending millions of tax dollars on the back end — the jail, for instance, is Central Florida's single-largest mental-health provider — when many of these issues could be handled more efficiently with treatment on the front end.

"We're either part of the solution," Jacobs said, "or we very much pay for the problem."

Consider these stats commission members heard Monday:

•More than 75 percent of kids who need mental-health services in Orange County don't receive them.

•Up to 80 percent of the youth in child welfare have mental-health problems

•About 70 percent of those in the juvenile-justice system have diagnosable disorders.

All this in one of the wealthiest and most medically advanced countries in the world.

And right here, in America's playground — where kids are supposed to be our specialty.

The problems are more widespread than most of us imagine.

In fact, Candice Crawford, CEO of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida, said most employers have no idea how many of their workers' absences "are not really the flu."

Most of those dealing with mental illness aren't violent. Rather, Crawford often notes they're more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators.

Still, when mental illness goes untreated, bad things can happen.

That's why the commission is stocked with a wide variety of professions and professionals — Chief Judge Belvin Perry, Superintendent Barbara Jenkins, Sheriff Jerry Demings and about a dozen leaders from the health, business and nonprofit communities.

Ideally, the group will come up with concrete solutions. We need to coordinate services, perhaps including a one-stop resource for families. We need heightened public awareness of the prevalence of the issues. And we need to find more proactive ways to help kids when they first show symptoms.

We also need to follow through. Too often, this community forms "blue ribbon" task forces that merely talk a problem to death.

With the minds and manpower involved, we can do better.

As Crawford says: Mental illness "is one of the most costly — yet treatable — illnesses in our society."

I think we have moral obligation to do better by kids who are hurting and confused.

But even if you don't share that altruistic motivation, Jacobs says she can give you plenty of economic ones — since you're already paying many times over for the fallout from untreated illness.